funding mountaintop coal removal, perpetuating
student debt that has now surpassed $1 trillion nationally, laying off
more than 100,000 workers in the last few years and, of course,
foreclosing on millions of homeowners across the country. In
anticipation, the Charlotte City Council has already passed laws
criminalizing protest, as well as camping and carrying permanent
markers.

The latter part of the quote, about the great lengths
officials have gone to truncate rights to free speech and assembly, is
unfortunately less remarkable than the activists’ coalition-building.
There is no doubt more to come, since Charlotte will host the Democratic
National Convention in September—and Occupy activists have promised to target that event.

In addition to outside marches, there were also critics of BoA inside
the annual meeting, with dissidents introducing shareholders’
resolutions challenging the bank’s overseas tax havens and its support
of environmentally destructive mining practices. As Zach Carter of the Huffington Postreported, Bank of America CEO and public enemy number one Brian Moynihan

defended the company’s operation of subsidiaries in
nations identified as international tax havens by saying, “We’re a
global business,” suggesting that Bank of America needs its
sub-companies in other nations because that’s where the business is.

“I don’t think there’s a whole lot of Bank of America operations in the Cayman Islands,” one disgruntled shareholder responded.

“You are part of the poisoning of Appalachia and so
is every one of your directors and so is every one of your
shareholders,” Kincaid said. “You are part of the destruction of an
entire region of the country.”

“Sir, our environmental team will take a look at it. We look at it all the time,” Moynihan said.

The crowd responded with jeers.

The move to target corporate shareholders meetings is the outgrowth of an ad hoc coalition that is calling itself 99% Power. This umbrella campaign includes participation from community groups (National People’s Action, the New Bottom Line, the Unity Alliance),
environmental organizations (Rainforest Action Network), and major
unions (UNITE HERE, SEIU, USW)—and it overlaps very substantially with
the groups that organized the 99% Spring
trainings last month. Those trainings—an effort to provide 100,000
people will skills in nonviolent direct action—drew some over-the-top
criticism. Adbusters magazine led the way
with frantic cries of cooptation. It characterized the trainings as a
scheme to make the Occupy movement a “reelection campaign for President
Obama” and encouraged its readers to “Jump, jump, jump over the dead
body of the old left!”

This was more paranoia than it was an actual effort to look at the
99% Spring agenda or to assess the range of groups involved in it. As I wrote
in April, the trainings ended up getting some mixed reviews, but, on
the whole, they could hardly be characterized as Camp Obama cheer
sessions. Moreover, what some frame negatively as cooptation could
easily—and more accurately—be framed positively as Occupy gathering needed allies and successfully setting the agenda for a far-reaching progressive movement.

In my view, the Bank vs. America protests provide more evidence for
the baselessness of cooptation complaints. While the decision to focus
attention on the spring meetings of major corporations did come out of a
coalition of institutional left groups, you’d be hard pressed to argue
that the actions we saw this week do not fit comfortably within the
established ethos of Occupy. And even if joining those confronting
Moynihan was not your cup of tea, it’s hard to see how the Charlotte
protests were mutually exclusive with other Occupy-related organizing.
If anything, they helped to keep the movement in the press and generate a
continuing sense that activists are coming back strong after a winter
of semi-hibernation.

The more valid criticism is that it does not appear that 99% Spring,
despite trying to ready tens of thousands of people for escalating civil
disobedience, resulted in particularly disruptive actions in Charlotte.
The reports I’ve seen suggest that there were six anti-BoA protesters arrested there—with a handful of other arrests occurring at solidarity events in places like New York City. That’s hardly an avalanche of civil resistance.

On the plus side, there’s still more than a month of spring opportunities left, and there are upcoming protests at Sallie Mae, Chevron, Target, and WalMart—not to mention the NATO summit in Chicago. Worthy targets all, I’d say!

Interested?

An interview with Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum on his latest prank against Bank of America and why every protest needs some fun.

The Occupy effect? Last winter, Americans switched banks at three times the normal rate.

How to move your money from a too-big-to-fail bank into a local credit union.